Since August 28 – the date of the start of the present election campaign – historians have been gnashing their teeth. It’s that almost every day that passes, they are given the opportunity to see that the leaders care very little about historical reality. On August 29, François Legault promised “the largest tax cut in the history of Quebec”, while that propelled by the Parti Québécois, barely 20 years ago, had been even more considerable.
A few hours later, Éric Duhaime, who had clumsily taken his inspiration from Jean Lesage’s “Maîtres chez nous” slogan in the middle of the summer, this time presented Quebec as being “the oldest democracy on the continent”, thus omitting to mention that democratic practices were already in vogue in the 17e century, just south of the border, in the 13 British colonies.
Then, at the start of the last week, Dominique Anglade also chose to defy the past. After describing François Legault’s positions on immigration as “shabby”, she added that “nurturing the fear of the other” was akin to the “oldest form of politics” in Quebec, the very one which used to consist of “pitting us against each other”. This is, however, totally false.
If we study the parliamentary debates that took place in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec during the first 30 years of Confederation, we first see that the discourse of Quebec elected officials was very favorable to immigration. The majority of deputies open to the arrival of foreign populations are moreover by virtue of the ideal of prosperity, which stems from a broader desire for expansion. By expansion, we mean increasing the population of Quebec, an objective presented as a “national work” by Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau.
By expansion, we also mean the occupation of the territory, the shortcut to the conservation of our “legitimate heritage” described by Pierre-Alexis Tremblay in the Legislative Assembly. These two missions go through strong immigration. Another theme at the heart of the discourse favorable to immigration, at the very beginning of the history of the province of Quebec, is the desire to repatriate the 900,000 French Canadians who settled in the United States between 1840 and 1930. .
This is why the historian Martin Pâquet qualified, a few years ago, the repatriated French-Canadian as “the best immigrant”. A study of the debates also reveals that a large number of Quebec deputies supported at the same time that the arrival of foreign populations could improve the state of the province, as much on the agricultural, industrial as moral levels. At the turn of the 19the century, the immigrant is thus perceived as the one who can allow Quebec to enter modernity, or else to face it. It sheds light, an ethic of life capable of answering the doubts that the ups and downs of history have left on the past and future course of Quebec.
Contrary to what Dominique Anglade was saying this week, the discourse of Quebec elected officials unfavorable to immigration does not generally unfold according to “the fear of the other”. Most of the time, the deputies in question recall rather that the costs incurred did not bring the expected results. They also recall that the repatriation of French Canadians should normally be prioritized over European immigration. As for the deputies who maintain that immigrants threaten social cohesion, they are both an extremely small minority and isolated, apart from Honoré Mercier, who, on the other hand, is above all wary of socialists.
In short, no offense to the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, her interpretation of Quebec’s past is more a matter of strategic narrative than a faithful reading of the sources at our disposal. On the other hand, if the history of ideas occupies an important place in her mind, she might be interested to learn that, despite the fact that they are an extremely small minority to occupy the seats of the Legislative Assembly between 1867 and 1900, the members of the Liberal Party of Quebec are nevertheless those who express themselves most against immigration during this period. Like what history, insofar as one is really interested in it, is strewn with surprises.